


i see red

by ceserabeau



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-06 02:34:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1841140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceserabeau/pseuds/ceserabeau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Day fifty, and Stiles can’t believe he’s still alive.</p><p>Zombie AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	i see red

Day zero, and Stiles dad wakes him early in the morning.

“I have to go to the office,” he says as Stiles grumbles into the pillow. I want you to stay inside today, okay?”

“Something going on?” Stiles asks sleepily.

His dad touches his head gently. “I’ll tell you about it later,” he says. “I’ll be back in time for dinner.”

Stiles never sees him again.

-

Day four, and the power goes out halfway through Stiles’ phone call to his Aunt Mary in Cleveland.

He’s telling her how he hasn’t heard from his dad in days when the line goes dead. Behind him the TV shuts off with a click, the news reporter’s voice cutting out in the middle of a fact about epidemic death rates.

In the silence, the sob that escapes Stiles’ throat is ten times as loud.

-

Day twelve, and Stiles comes across his first zombie.

All his neighbours have left, fleeing whatever pandemic is spreading across the country, so Stiles scavenges through their empty houses rather than risking a trip to the store.

He’s coming down the McGrath’s hallway when he hears the groaning. He follows it to the kitchen where Mrs McGrath is trapped half-in, half-out of the back door. She must be caught on something because she can’t move herself, just scrabbles uselessly at the floor.

Her face is slack, her skin grey and flaky. There’s a bloody bite mark on her neck and when she sees Stiles she snarls viciously. Half her teeth are missing from her mouth but she still snaps her jaws at him anyway.

She’s a zombie, a genuine flesh-biting, brain-eating zombie. Stiles thinks it would be exciting if she wasn’t trying to eat him.

-

Day seventeen, and Stiles finally decides to go find his dad.

The drive to the station is eerily quiet. All the radio is broadcasting is static and outside there’s only the sound of birds singing as he drives down the empty streets.

When he gets to the station ten minutes later, it’s deserted. No cars in the lot, no people milling about, dead or alive. He takes his bat from the backseat and his dad’s spare gun from the glove box, and heads for the door. 

Inside, the station is eerily silent. The break room is empty. There’s no one at reception or in the bathrooms or at their desks. It isn’t until he gets to his dad’s office that he sees the figure slumped over his desk, head on their arms. Behind them, there’s a map of the country pinned to the notice board. Every part of it is shaded a bright, bloody red.

“Dad?” he calls into the silence.

The person begins to move; it’s head comes up slowly until it’s looking right at Stiles. It’s Deputy Parrish – or it was Deputy Parrish. Half his face is missing, bloody and raw, and Stiles tries not to throw up when he sees it.

Parrish begins to stand up, his body tilting dangerously as he pushes back the chair. It scrapes along the floor with a screech that makes Stiles flinch. Parrish’s mouth moves silently, opening and closing like a fish gasping for air, and Stiles takes a bewildered step closer.

“Where’s my dad?” he asks, even as he knows that Parrish doesn’t know, could tell him if he did.

Parrish gets himself on his feet and lurches around the desk. Stiles can see the bloody bite mark high up on his thigh, a red stain against the khaki of his pants: he wonders for a second how he got it, what situation he was in, if his dad was there. Then Parrish staggers forward and wraps his hands around Stiles’ shoulders.

Stiles panics, swinging wildly with the bat and getting Parrish hard in the face. He goes down, but even on the floor he’s still trying to crawl towards him, hands outstretched and grasping. Stiles just raises the bat and brings it down: once, twice, three times, over and over until there’s blood painting the walls and the ceiling and his face and his hands, until Parrish stops moving and lies there in a pool of his own brain matter.

Stiles stares down at it, disbelieving, listening to the steady ticking of the clock on the wall. He feels numb, like this is a dream he can’t wake himself from. Parrish’s body offer no answers, no clues as to how he can solve the problem.

The creak of a door somewhere in the station makes him jerk and when he sticks his head out the door, Stiles can hear the faint groaning he knows means more zombies are on their way. It’s too dangerous to stay, so he steps over Parrish’s body to empty the safe in the cabinet of guns and ammo before fleeing for the door.

He’s gone by the time the sun peeks over the horizon, leaving Beacon Hills behind, aglow in a wash of red.

-

Day twenty-five, and Stiles is already tired of being on the road.

He heads north, then east. There’s a nuclear power plant down near San Luis Obispo and Stiles is fairly sure it’s gone into meltdown by now; he doesn’t want to survive the zombie apocalypse only to die of radiation poisoning.

He only drives during the day, and pulls onto the shoulder before the sun sets. Some nights he climbs the tallest tree he can find and sleeps tied to the trunk, out of reach of any zombies that might be lurking around. Some nights he hides under piles of blankets and prays that nothing sniffs him out.

He doesn’t sleep much, and when he does his dreams are painted red.

-

Day thirty-one, and Stiles gets attacked.

It’s early, the sky still grey with the dawn, and he’s siphoning gas from some abandoned cars in a strip mall when a hand lands heavy on his shoulder. He brain doesn’t connect the dots, foolishly expecting it to be someone he knows, but when he turns it’s a grey-faced, slack-jawed monster leaning it to take a bit out of his neck.

Stiles doesn’t think, just reacts, slams his elbow up into the thing’s face. It stumbles back and he can see clearly where it’s missing an arm, shoulder a mass of lumpy, rotting flesh. He gags a little, but the thing doesn’t seem keen on giving him time to recover because it charges again, remaining arm outstretched and grasping.

Stiles almost makes a break for the jeep before he remembers the gun jammed awkwardly into the waistband of his jeans, the exact way his dad always used to mock when he saw it on TV. He pulls it out and takes aim, but his hand is shaking and the zombie’s coming on fast, and in the end he just aims wildly and pulls the trigger.

The first shot takes out the zombie’s leg and it goes down, dropping sharply to the tarmac. But that doesn’t stop it from still trying to reach him, dragging itself along the ground with an awful squelching noise.

Stiles watches it for a moment, before he corrects his stance and aims the way his dad taught him. This time it’s easier and the bullet goes exactly where he wants: in the brain, a tiny explosion of blood, and the zombie stops moving altogether.

He stands looking down at it for a long moment, breath coming in short, sharp pants. Then he puts the gun back in his jeans and head back for the jeep, climbing carefully inside and slumping down behind the wheel. When he goes to start the car, his hand shakes so violently he can’t get a good grip on the keys.

Stiles sits there and waits. It takes a long time for his hands to stop trembling, but eventually he can hold the wheel without feeling like he’ll drive off the road if he starts the car. He’s on his way again by the time the sun is high in the sky.

-

Day fifty, and Stiles can’t believe he’s still alive.

-

Day sixty-one, and the jeep breaks down.

There’s smoke pouring out from under the hood and when Stiles pops it open, he burns long lines down the palms of his hands.

“ _Motherfucker_ ,” he shouts, jumping back. “Are you kidding me, Roscoe? Two thousand miles and you can’t do a few more?”

The jeep only belches more of the thick, dark smoke at him. Stiles kicks out at the bumper, watches it shake with the force. He sighs and slumps down onto the curb, leaning over to rest his forehead against the jeep.

“Come on, buddy,” he murmurs, running his hand gently over the hot metal, “Please don’t do this to me.”

Again, nothing, only the tweeting of birds in the trees. Stiles takes a heavy breath and it hitches sharply in his throat; he tries again and chokes on a sob.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Dad was always the one who was good with cars. I should’ve asked him to show me, I should’ve –”

He trails off, hiccupping desperately, tears dripping down his face. There’s no one around to see it, but he feels irrationally embarrassed, and swipes angrily at his eyes.

“We had a good run, buddy,” he says, patting the jeep’s side with what feels like the heaviest sigh in the world. “Guess it’s time to move on.”

The jeep doesn’t answer so Stiles pushes himself to his feet, looking around at where he’s rolled to a halt. It’s a residential area and there are cars in almost every driveway, but he’s tired – he’s _exhausted_ , so in the end he finds a house with boarded up windows and moves in.

It’s nice, almost like having a home again, except for the blood splatter that decorates every room.

-

Day seventy-three, and Stiles wakes up with a knife against his jugular.

When Stiles opens his eyes, there’s a man staring down at him. “Scream and I’ll slit your throat,” he says.

“What do you want?” Stiles asks, staying as still as he can. The hand holding the knife is twitchy and he doesn’t want to get his throat slit by accident.

“Your food, your weapons, whatever you’ve got,” the man says.

Stiles wants to shout, to lash out – without all that stuff he’s a dead man – but the sharp edge of the blade digs into his skin and his protests die in his throat.

“Take it,” he says, gesturing to where what little he has is stacked up in careful piles.

The man smiles, manic, desperate, full of teeth, and he backs up slowly, knife still held out in front of him. “Move,” he says, “And I’ll slice your face off.”

Stiles nods, body pressed against the couch cushions. He watches as the man stuffing his things into a bag. Cans and bottles. Matches and rolls of toilet paper. The flashlight, the compass. His knife. His gun.

It isn’t until the man touches the Sherriff’s badge on his beat-up backpack that Stiles jolts out of his reverie. “ _Don’t_ ,” he shouts, then jerks back when the man turns on him.

“Something special?” the man asks, tilting his head at Stiles. His fingers rub over the tarnished silver and Stiles flinches.

“It was my dad’s,” he says softly.

The man frowns, but he sets the badge down carefully where he found it, some of the craziness fading in his eyes. When he pushes himself to his feet, he put back one of the cans he’d taken.

“Keep going, kid,” he says, and vanishes out the door.

When the door clicks shut, Stiles heaves himself up and slides over to where his bag sits. When he picks it up, the badge glints in the faint light filtering through the windows. The gold is tarnished, faded, but Stiles can still feel the ridges of the letters under his fingertips.

He sits there with it cupped in his hands until the sun starts to rise, its rays sneaking around the curtains. When the light hits the badge it reflects into his eyes, bright and blinding, and Stiles finally has something to blame for the tears that are falling down his face.

-

Day seventy-nine, and Stiles finally comes across a herd.

He isn’t sure what wakes him from his sleep, curled up in the backseat of the car. When he cracks his eyes open, all he can see is the grey roof and the slick of condensation on the windows from his breathing. But once he’s blinked himself awake and sat up slightly, he can see the great shambling mass of zombies shuffling slowly by through the windscreen, rocking the car slightly every time they nudge it.

Stiles panics for a moment, heart beating a mile a minute, and he jerks back into his pile of blanket with a whimper. This is it, he thinks, it’s over: he’s about to die in a stolen car all alone on a highway in the middle of nowhere.

But none of the zombies even look his way, just continue ambling along, glazed eyes staring straight ahead. Not a single one so much as twitches in his direction as he peers out at them through the glass.

Stiles watches them for a long moment before settling back down into his bed, and letting the soothing rocking of the car on its axis lull him back into sleep.

-

Day eighty-seven, and Stiles spots a dust cloud on the horizon as he’s taking a leak.

By the time it gets closer, Stiles has tucked himself into the backseat of his truck, hidden under a tarp, but he can still peer out the window at whatever’s coming.

The dust cloud comes closer and soon Stiles can see that it’s two cars, speeding along the highway: the first a station wagon, veering wildly around the road; the other a pickup, two men standing on the back. This close he can hear the chatter of gunfire, the sharp squeal of tires on tarmac.

The front car skids suddenly and spins violently, barely missing his car as it flies across the road and slams into a tree. The engine bursts into flames and Stiles can hear someone screaming: a woman, the driver.

The pickup skids to a halt, and the men jump out, brandishing their weapons. The door of the burning car pops open and the woman drags herself out, choking on her sobs. The men stand around, watching as she falls to her knees while the flames devour her car.

“Please,” Stiles can hear her begging, “Please don’t kill me.”

The men’s laughter rising up over the crackling of the flames. “We ain’t gonna kill you,” one of them says, accent thick and slow. “Least not yet.”

Stiles ducks down as the men start across the ground towards her, nudging another and laughing as the woman scrabbles away from them, kicking up a cloud as she tries to get away. One of them gets a hand around her ankle and drags her through the dust. She lashes out and gets him in the jaw, but the others are on her, a flurry of hard weapons and harder hands.

Stiles closes his eyes to it, but it does nothing to drown out the screams. In the end, he hunkers down under the tarp, trying to stay as still as possible, praying they don’t turn around. He’s starting to realise that humans are the worst monsters of all.

-

Day one-hundred, and Stiles is tired and worn down, he’s thin as a rake and hasn’t showered in months, but he’s alive. He’s still fucking alive.

He’ll take any victory he can get.

-

Day one-hundred and fourteen, and the car gets a flat.

He’s in the middle of nowhere: some country lane in what used to be Nebraska which winds between great open fields full of corn withering in the early summer heat. There’s nothing around, no cars to salvage, no houses to scavenge. Just fields as far as the eye can see.

There don’t seem to be any zombies around, so Stiles takes his time sorting his stuff out. He leaves the extra things he has, the winter clothes and the spare canteen, anything heavy or bulky. His knife goes into his boot, his gun into the back of his jeans. The badge gleams on his backpack.

“Thanks,” he says to the car, patting it gently, and laughs at how croaky his voice is.

When he slams the trunk down, the noise startles some birds from the field. Stiles stands there in the middle of the road and watches them soar overheard, dipping and wheeling in elegant shapes.  He thinks wistfully of shooting them down; it’s been a while since he had fresh meat.

In the end though, the birds settle back down into their nests in the corn and Stiles turns away. He starts to walk.

-

Day one-hundred and thirty-two, and Stiles comes across a stream running parallel to the road he’s trekking along.

It’s a blindingly hot summer’s day, maybe mid-July if he’s keeping track of the days right, and his whole body is one big sore. In his shoes his feet are raw from the endless walking, covered in blisters and blood. His arms and neck and face feel tight and dry, the beginnings of sunburn making them ache fiercely. He’s barely slept, body on high alert all the time without a safe place to rest, and his supplies are dwindling dangerously low.

So the sound of burbling water nearby is a surprise. It makes Stiles glance down, and he nearly trips over his feet in surprise at the stream trickling past. He reaches down slowly to check that it’s real, and when the water rushes over the tips of his fingers, his legs give way and he collapsed down into the dirt.

His first reaction is to sticks his face under the surface and gulps, gulps, _gulps_ until he has to come up for air or drown in the sweet, cold stream. When he comes up, he’s panting, ecstatic but still desperately thirsty, so he cups his hands to scoop the water up into his mouth over and over again.

It takes a while for Stiles’ thirst to be quenched, but when it is he strips his shirt over his head and flops down into the cool water, lets it soothe the burns and clean away the dirt. He lies there for what feels like hours, staring up at the cloudless sky and the overhanging trees, utterly careless and without fear, until the sun starts to move towards the horizon and he starts to shiver as the temperature begins to drop.

When Stiles sits up again, soaked from head to toe, something catches his eye: a postcard trapped in the mud of the bank, the top of the Empire State Building peeking out the sludge. Stiles reaches for it, wondering who would’ve left something like that in a place like this.  

When he flips it over there’s only one line written on it in a chicken-scratch scrawl, ink slightly smudged from the water: _I promise everything is going to be alright_.

Stiles laughs until he cries.

-

Day one-hundred and forty-nine, and the roar of an engine startles Stiles from his daze.

When Stiles glances over his shoulder, he can see a truck coming down the road, the afternoon sunshine glinting off the windshield. Stiles can’t see the driver, but in his experience people mean problems, so he starts to move towards the tree line. He’s just ducking behind a bush when the truck pulls up, brakes squeaking as it rolls to a stop.

Stiles peers through the leaves and can just make out two people, girls, sitting in the front seat. They both turn in unison to where he’s hiding, peering out the window at him.

“We can see you in there,” one of them calls out.

“ _Allison_ ,” the other hisses, “Don’t encourage him. Now is not the time to be picking up strays.”

Stiles considers it, assesses the situation the way his dad taught him once upon a time. He decides it’s fairly low risk: two girls, clearly both alive and well, possibly armed but not visibly threatening. But everything is ten times more dangerous these days, so when he steps out of the bushes, it’s with his gun in his hand.

“Oh look,” the second girl says, and now Stiles can see she’s the one behind the wheel, “He’s got a gun. Well, time to go.”

The girl in the passenger seat whips round. “Lydia, stop.” She turns back to Stiles and he can see the way her dark hair frames her face. “We’re not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Stiles takes a few halting steps forward, close enough that they’re in range if he needs to start shooting. “What do you want?” he asks.

The driver leans forward and the light glints off the shocking red of her hair. “Nothing,” she says angrily. “We’ll be on our way now. Enjoy your walk.”

She revs the engine as if she’s about to drive off, but the brunette punches her arm. “Lydia, seriously, _enough_. Survivors stick together, remember?”

The girl – Lydia – rolls her eyes. “Yes, Allison, I remember.” She sighs and raises an unimpressed eyebrow at Stiles. “I just didn’t think it included homeless people.”

Stiles lets out a dry laugh. “Who isn’t homeless these days?”

The brunette, Allison, chuckles. “I guess so.” She smiles at him and beckons him closer. “Where are you headed?”

Stiles shrugs at them. “Nowhere in particular.” Allison beckons again, but Stiles stays rooted to the spot and eyes them suspiciously. “Where are you headed?”

“Home,” Allison says and smiles brightly. “Want to come with us?”

Lydia sighs loudly. “Allison, we don’t know him. He has a gun. What makes you think it’s a good idea to invite him back to our house?”

Allison glares. “Survivors stick together,” she repeats.

Lydia huffs out an angry breath. “Fine, but when he tries to kill us, I get to say I told you so.”

“I won’t try to kill you,” Stiles tells them. He clicks the safety on his gun back on, tucks it into the back of his jeans, but doesn’t move any closer yet. If there’s one thing he’s learnt it’s that he can only trust himself. “Where’s your place?”

Allison smiles at him. “Just past Tulsa,” she tells him. “It’s a day’s drive or so from here.”

Stiles narrows his eyes at them, considering. “How many of you are there?” he asks.

Allison cocks her head like she’s counting. “About twenty,” she says eventually. “Mostly individuals but there are some families too. My dad's there. Are you on your own?”

Stiles nods, his heart clenching a little when he thinks about how he wasn’t always. Allison gives her apologetic smile, and behind her Lydia’s eyes flick away sharply as her mouth flattens into a thin, sad line.

“Survivors stick together,” Allison says again. “It’s kind of our motto. You don’t have to stay, but we can probably find you a car and supplies and stuff – if you want.”

Stiles watches her, watches them both. They seem genuine enough, with their easy banter and soft smiles. And then there’s the possibility that they’re telling the truth, that there might be somewhere safe, somewhere to rest, even if it’s for a couple of days. Maybe somewhere with food and water, and maybe even a shower.

And if they’re lying, if they turn out to be the exact type of people he’s been trying to stay away from, well. He’s got a gun and enough bullets to take them out. It’s a dangerous world they live in and he’s not a kid any more; he can take care of himself.

“Okay,” he says, trying to tamp down on the faint hope he can feel swelling in his chest, “Why not?”

**Author's Note:**

> So the season premiere was like the best birthday present ever, and that whole scene where the jeep broke down finally made me come back to this. Total horror movie trope right there.
> 
> Not sure if I'll do more, but I'd like to if I can ever get round to it. Just started a Prohibition AU and my _plan_ is already 2000 words, whoops!


End file.
